Bitter Wintercress
death, life + grief at Imbolc
Last week was the eighth anniversary of my mom crossing from life to death to life. This week holds the crossing day of another dearly loved relative.
Although it's been eight years since my mom's passing, the bonds of love are more vital now than ever.
I had not intended to write about this. Yet, I felt this community would appreciate my reflections on grief and growth, a strange pair accompanying me each Imbolc.
Imbolc is the halfway point between the winter solstice's darkness and the spring equinox's returning light. It's known as a cross-quarter day. It's a ray of hope in the cold darkness of winter. At Imbolc eight years ago, I desperately needed a candle in the dark of my grief-filled winter.
It's interesting to note that the Christianization of Imbolc is the festival of Candlemas, and candles feature in both pagan and Christian celebrations of Imbolc. Imbolc means "stirring in the belly," the first faint quickening of returning life.
Life is complicated, and untangling the knots is hard work but makes way for mending the holes.
I don't have many regrets, but the last few years with my mother hold some. In retrospect, I was overwhelmed doing double-duty caregiving for my autistic son and my mom, who was falling deeper and deeper into dementia. In addition, I was uninformed about her particular type of dementia and had no resources or support from her doctors.
I also realize now that I was terrified, in denial, and very confused. I was also carrying guilt, knowing that eventually, my mother would need to go to a care facility.
Some of my most profound and healing work was done during the first few years after her death.
That journey was true "depth work." It was painful and often felt strange and disorienting. What I eventually realized was that one thread of the work was ancestral. I was being called to heal things that were my mother's. I only had a vague notion of what this was about, yet it felt palpably powerful as I did the work.
Grief, loss, and regret walk with me. Their lessons are bitter medicine but very, very healing. What hurts can also heal in unexpected and unimaginable ways.
To understand the true relationship between life and death is to walk on the edge of existence in the shadow of the Eternal.
Only mystics and shamans dare to tread there. Each year on this anniversary, I make my pilgrimage to the edge with awe and wonder.
To lose a loved one is to be initiated into a mystery without a name. The result is to become more at home in the spiritual and less attached to the earthly while also becoming more unshakable in faith.
Samhain and All Souls is the usual time to remember our departed loved ones. Yet, I find Imbolc also to be a powerful time to reflect. The dark winter holds my most profound grief. I feel the loss, powerlessness, and sense of bereftness all over again.
I walk outside, and the earth is still as if she has stopped breathing; almost everything appears dead.
At my feet are the only green and growing things, mats of bitter wintercress. It's so uncannily appropriate that a bitter herb should be the first sign of new life at Imbolc in my yard.
Mother Earth knows I cannot stay in the season of dark grief forever. Her wisdom, given not through words but through experience, shows me how to move through the cycles of love and loss.
As I walk along the knife edge of Yule and Imbolc, I'm never sure if I will stray back into the darkness or find the courage to lean into the growing light.
Falling back into darkness is easy. I become numb and frozen. All feeling is stilled, and I become a corpse. Choosing the light requires more. Once I do so, I know I must submit to its effects. That means growth. It means going on, continuing to live, and most of all, feeling. To be alive and engaged with life is to feel all the feelings, as they say.
This is why in the two years after my mother's passing, I turned to creative work. That wasn't a conscious choice. I didn't know it would help. I didn't really even know what I was doing. But I knew that's what I needed to do.
Looking back now and understanding so much more about how our souls process profound emotions like grief, loss, and trauma, the experience of creativity during that time makes perfect sense.
Imbolc has become a complex symbol for me of death and returning life. It strengthened my belief that open pathways greet the soul in another realm. Last autumn, I planted snowdrops, crocus, and daffodils to sweeten the message of the bitter wintercress. That was an act of sacred gardening meant to be an earthly reminder of a spiritual truth. Life follows death.
Nature is a book of revelation. Creativity is a path to healing. Together they provide a balm for the soul.
Tell me your grief stories in the comments. Share your healing experiences with nature and art-making. Through our creative work and the sharing of stories, we help and heal each other.
If you’ve read this far, Thank YOU!
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My father died right before Thanksgiving some years back from cancer that started in his lung and spread to his liver. Our relationship had been strained from his second marriage to a jealous and vindictive woman who didn’t want my younger brother and myself to be recognized over her daughter and son. In spite of her attempts my father and I were beginning to rebuild our father/ daughter relationship when he began to succumb to the cancer.
He never admitted to me just how bad it was and I thought he was doing better until the night I got a call from my brother telling me that our dad was in the process of passing. I remember praying in tears to Father God begging him to not let my dad suffer and to please let him pass quickly. Cancer can be such cruel disease with people lingering in pain for weeks before passing. The next morning my brother called and told me that Dad has passed sometime in the very early hours of the morning. He also told me this; he went in to see Dad before his body was taken to the mortuary and on his face was the most beautiful look of total peace and a lovely smile. Whatever my dad experienced at his time of passing must have been beautiful and joyful.
I sometimes wonder if it was “right” for me to pray for the quick and merciful death of my father. I prayed this out of love and not bitterness. Is there a right way for something like this and could that beautiful smile have been because my dad was told that his daughter was praying this prayer?
Blessings to you.